I just got back from a week of Field Based Training, where a group of 5 aspirantes went to La Libertad to visit the sites of a few health volunteers who are working there.
We arrived in Trujillo on Monday morning and went to this crazy museum with ceramic pieces from cultures that were in Peru in 200 AD, and there was also a fetus of a girl who was born with some sort of birth defect and was therefore preserved in some manner. The ceramic pieces were really interesting because they were from a few different cultures, and yet represented the physical and mental deformities and diseases that are still around today, such as a missing cleft in the mouth, and down syndrome.
Later, we hopped on a 3 hour bus to Julcan, a city in the sierra. We worked with a volunteer there on a nutrition charla with a few of the women she works with in town. I learned how to make natural yogurt, a skill I’m excited to put into practice. We were planning to hike out that afternoon, but the rains came with force and we were stuck in Julcan for an extra night.
We got up early the next day and hiked 2 hours with our backpacks to the site of another volunteer. There is no other form of transportation by which we could get to the site, but the hike was nice, and the mountains were beautiful. When we arrived we met a group of women that the volunteer has been working with on more nutritious meals. To demonstrate, we cooked a feast together of lentil soup, wheat rice, chicken, potatoes, and a dessert that was similar to apple sauce. While we were cooking the thunderclouds started rolling in and we got an awesome show of thunder and lightning that was really close. Suddenly, the sky opened and it began to hail until everything was covered with white, as though it had snowed. We simply moved the fire from the open area underneath the overhang of a building and kept cooking. It was delicious.
Once thoroughly stuffed, we hiked back up the side of the mountain. We were introduced to a woman and helped her to construct a cocina mejorada. This is a big project taken on by a lot of volunteers. Many families in the sierra have a wood fire in their kitchen and use that to cook, but the amount of smoke in the room is really unhealthy. The cocina mejorada is built from adobe blocks that create a canal for the fire, then on top of the adobe blocks we placed iron rods to support the pots. We created a stove for two pots, so we placed the two most used pots on the iron rods, then covered all the adobe with a mixture of dirt, water, and some hay. There was a thin metal sheet that had been folded into a tube that was used as a chimney up from the fire and out a hole in the wall. Once the whole contraption was covered in mud, we removed the pots, thus leaving two perfectly fit holes, and left it to dry. Now the smoke will be blocked by the pots in the holes, and will be channeled up and out the chimney and will no longer be going directly into the lungs of this woman. The kitchen was really dark because there is no electricity in this town, but once a candle was brought it I could see that the walls and ceiling were completely black (it looked like coal had been rubbed all over the walls), which was all from the smoke from the old stove. I can only imagine what her lungs look like. Many people keep guinea pigs (cuy) in their kitchens running loose, fatten them up over the course of a year, and eat them (supposedly it’s a delicacy, but I have yet to try it). As a demonstration I would love to cut open the lungs of a cuy to show how tarred and black they are after so much time breathing the smoke in the kitchen, similar to the women who cook all day.
We arrived in Trujillo on Monday morning and went to this crazy museum with ceramic pieces from cultures that were in Peru in 200 AD, and there was also a fetus of a girl who was born with some sort of birth defect and was therefore preserved in some manner. The ceramic pieces were really interesting because they were from a few different cultures, and yet represented the physical and mental deformities and diseases that are still around today, such as a missing cleft in the mouth, and down syndrome.
Later, we hopped on a 3 hour bus to Julcan, a city in the sierra. We worked with a volunteer there on a nutrition charla with a few of the women she works with in town. I learned how to make natural yogurt, a skill I’m excited to put into practice. We were planning to hike out that afternoon, but the rains came with force and we were stuck in Julcan for an extra night.
We got up early the next day and hiked 2 hours with our backpacks to the site of another volunteer. There is no other form of transportation by which we could get to the site, but the hike was nice, and the mountains were beautiful. When we arrived we met a group of women that the volunteer has been working with on more nutritious meals. To demonstrate, we cooked a feast together of lentil soup, wheat rice, chicken, potatoes, and a dessert that was similar to apple sauce. While we were cooking the thunderclouds started rolling in and we got an awesome show of thunder and lightning that was really close. Suddenly, the sky opened and it began to hail until everything was covered with white, as though it had snowed. We simply moved the fire from the open area underneath the overhang of a building and kept cooking. It was delicious.
Once thoroughly stuffed, we hiked back up the side of the mountain. We were introduced to a woman and helped her to construct a cocina mejorada. This is a big project taken on by a lot of volunteers. Many families in the sierra have a wood fire in their kitchen and use that to cook, but the amount of smoke in the room is really unhealthy. The cocina mejorada is built from adobe blocks that create a canal for the fire, then on top of the adobe blocks we placed iron rods to support the pots. We created a stove for two pots, so we placed the two most used pots on the iron rods, then covered all the adobe with a mixture of dirt, water, and some hay. There was a thin metal sheet that had been folded into a tube that was used as a chimney up from the fire and out a hole in the wall. Once the whole contraption was covered in mud, we removed the pots, thus leaving two perfectly fit holes, and left it to dry. Now the smoke will be blocked by the pots in the holes, and will be channeled up and out the chimney and will no longer be going directly into the lungs of this woman. The kitchen was really dark because there is no electricity in this town, but once a candle was brought it I could see that the walls and ceiling were completely black (it looked like coal had been rubbed all over the walls), which was all from the smoke from the old stove. I can only imagine what her lungs look like. Many people keep guinea pigs (cuy) in their kitchens running loose, fatten them up over the course of a year, and eat them (supposedly it’s a delicacy, but I have yet to try it). As a demonstration I would love to cut open the lungs of a cuy to show how tarred and black they are after so much time breathing the smoke in the kitchen, similar to the women who cook all day.
After finishing the cocina, we were adopted by families in the tiny town for the night. I was taken in with another female aspirante, Emily. We started following the townsmember, Victoria back to her house. She was carrying her one year old on her back, has a 3 year-old who was back at the house, and is 22-years old. As we were walking it was getting dark, and had started to rain a bit. She led us down a mudslide into a ravine, we were hopping from rock to rock across a river, then had to scramble back out of the ravine up the mudslide on the other side. Emily and I were falling and slipping all over the place, covered in mud, while Victoria was practically skipping along with her baby on her back. I think she’s practiced that before. It was interesting to have dinner with the family because Emily and I were seated at the table, and Victoria’s uncle sat with us, but due to their embarrassment and culture the two women (Victoria and her aunt) sat in the corner on sacks of rice. The candle was on the table, and it felt really awkward to be lit up and served at the center table while the other women were hidden in the corner and didn’t speak, but allowed the uncle to carry the conversation.
We left the small mountain village the same way we arrived – had our backpacks on and hiked up the hill. We traveled back to Julcan, and back to Trujillo, where we had some time to relax. We stayed in a hostal that had hot water, which was incredible.
Friday we arrived in San Jose and were treated by the local schoolkids to a show of song, dance, and poetry that they had prepared, along with a snack of papa huancaina, which is a typical dish of potato with a spicy sauce. We then led a charla with a class of kids on hygiene. Using dirt and whatever else we could find that looked dirty, we told a story about Juanito Manito (Little John Hands) and made a set of hands filthy, then demoed proper handwashing techniques. We then took the class outside and, after covertly sprinkling glitter on our hands, introduced ourselves to all the kids. After shaking our hands, their hands were covered in glitter as well, thus demonstrating how easily germs and bacteria can travel. Each student then washed their hands, and we had a couple prizes of fruit for those who could answer some review questions about the lecture.
The same day we also helped out in a computer class for kids who started not being able to use a keyboard at all, and are now working in Microsoft Word on typing skills and being able to change font, color and size. The girl that I was working with went and bought me a cookie afterwards, so I think she liked me. After dinner, we taught an English class to a few adults in the community. We went with the slang theme because it’s usually most interesting. All these community members are now walking around saluting each other with “Hey, what’s up?” rather than typical “buenas”.
On Saturday, after a lecture about the water system, the governer of San Jose decided to take us on a personal tour of the water system in the town. I have to admit that I was not excited about this tour from the start because we were already running behind on time, and therefore I wanted to move on with our day. We were led out into the middle of a field where there was a concrete structure built into the ground, and it’s where all the shit water from the town goes. The smell made me want to vomit. Meanwhile, the governor was telling us about how they just let the bad stuff settle to the bottom, siphon off the top layer and use it for the local agriculture. The fruit is literally grown with shit water. He then took us down a path along the river, which people bathe in, use for water, and all the waste from their houses goes into, and then we trekked across a few more fields before ending up at the water plant. As he was trying to show us how it worked he touched a few things, and before we knew it there was water coming out of the side of pipes and he didn’t know how to fix it. I don’t know if the town will have water for a few days.
Once we escaped from this tour, the day took a turn for the better. We went to the beach town of Pacasmayo to get some awesome ceviche for lunch. We then walked along the boardwalk before hopping our bus back to Trujillo. Since we still had a few hours before our bus back to Lima, we went out to Huanchaco, which is a beach town outside the city that is famous for it’s surfing and the use of the old fishing boats that have been used for hundreds of years in Peru. It was a beautiful evening, and we had a good time talking about our experiences over the week and talking about what we had learned. I’m really glad to have some new people that I feel comfortable asking advice from. I feel like I can contact any of the volunteers I met this week with questions about anything from which brand of rice they buy to how to go about organizing a garden project. We’ve got about 9 days until we find out our sites . . . I’m getting anxious!
1 comment:
I want to learn how to make home-made yoghurt! Your experiences in Peru sound a lot like some of the places I have visited here in Nepal. Great writing, keep it up, and I can't wait to visit. xo
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